The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

Every country has the government it deserves.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.